Tonight's supper

Opening day of bass season. My big decision today: beer batter, or lightly fried with a bit of lemon?

Bio Blitz, gray moth

Big gray moth, it was the size of a sphinx moth.

UPDATE: Thanks to the nature list, this has been identified as a Waved Sphinx, Ceratomia undulosa.

Bio Blitz moth

One of the moths from the Bio Blitz.

(I'll refer to this as "wavy lined".)

UPDATE: Thanks to the nature list, the "wavy lined has been identified as Common Lytrosis, Lytrosis unitaria, the "cloaked" one is Alien Probole Moth, Probole alienaria.

Second moth from the Bio Blitz.

(I'll refer to it as light cloak with border.)

Bio Blitz Ants

Found these "pointy-butt ants" under a rock during the bio blitz. Neat looking little things.

UPDATE: Thanks to the nature list, these were narrowed down to the genus Crematogaster. It's too bad we don't have easily available identification guides for ants, there's so many of them, and they're fascinating creatures. Just think, a horde of females working together in cooperative effort without much interference from the males.

Bio Blitz: fly

Another Bio Blitz creature I'm trying to identify. This fly was found on a milkweed leaf at the side of old field pasture.

Liverwort from Bio Blitz

A liverwort, growing amidst some mniums and mosses on a rotted log in wet forest.

UPDATE: Thanks to the nature list, this has been identified as Conocephalum conicum.

More stuff from Bio Blitz

A land snail found under a rock. It's too bad I didn't know that Morton Creek was more like a small river, I could have brought my kayak and a long-handled net to scoop mud to try for molluscs. The access to the creek was crowded with bushes, made it difficult to get into.

Bio Blitz fungus

Some sort of fungus found under rotting wood/bark in wet woods, with some kind of beetle larva.

Damselfly, found during Bio Blitz

The rainy weather didn't help us out much for insects. I did manage one shot of a damselfly.

UPDATE: Thanks to the nature list, this one has been identified as a male Sedge Sprite.

Damselflies are such delightful little creatures. It's too bad I can't find a good comprehensive guide book. I shall try to photograph as many damselflies and dragonflies as I can this summer.

Now to figure things out...

I'm worse than a little kid, I'm still excited about having seen a bear. Now on to the practical part, sorting out all my scribbles and getting my list in order. So far I have about 195 species, got pics of a few things that I'll need help with, starting with this insect. It was about 1/2 inch long, found it on a milkweed leaf. Can't find it in my insect books, probably overlooking it.

Update: the kind folks on the nature list identified this one as the larva of a milkweed bug.

Bio Blitz

Had a great time at the KFN annual Bio Blitz, held near Morton. My personal highlight was finding a black bear, cute little duffer, must have been a yearling. Not small enough to worry about Mama, not big enough to worry about it. I just had the great fortune to be at the right place at the right time to see it run out onto the road ahead of us. Thank goodness I had a young biologist with me as a witness, the bear ran up into the woods and looked back at us through some trees, so this is as good a shot as I could get. As he put it, we got the classic Sasquatch pictures, but at least you can see the outline. It's ABOUT TIME I get to see a bear in this end of the province!

Got my ladder back

Chicks May 25, still blind and downy.


I'm always amazed at how quickly chicks grow. We had robins build a nest on top of the stepladder in the shed, seemed like in no time they had gone from hatchlings to fledglings. I found one that fledged out, sitting atop the little shed we keep back of the house in case we need to set up the generator. The next morning I watched the parents busily pulling worms from the freshly mown lawn, and it occurred to me I'd better look inside the shed to make sure they all got out. Good thing I looked, there was a tall empty plastic trash can, one of the chicks was sitting in the bottom of it, chirping at me when I loomed over the top. I reached down and grabbed it with both hands, chick chirped loudly, both parents started screaming from the neighbour's poplar tree a few feet away. I took it out and held it up for parents to see, they kept on screaming til I put it on the picnic table. As soon as I moved away one of the parents came down to inspect it. I thoroughly checked the shed to make sure no more of the chicks were trapped in there, then closed it up and went inside the house to watch the parents feed it on the picnic table.













Fledgling June 3rd.

Blue Star, Red Planet

I had read on spaceweather that Mars was going to be 1 degree from Regulus, a bright blue star, so decided to see if I could find this conjunction. As soon as I went outside and looked up I found it, bright shiny red and blue easy to see even for us beginner astronomers. Got a blurry slight out of focus shot, cropped a bit of that one to show the lovely colours.

Made for a nice star trail shot.